Point Counterpoint
by hell-whim
Summary: Lilly’s dead, and Duncan’s gone with his own little pinkwrapped piece of normal somewhere in Mexico, and you and Logan are stuck alone again, the inbetween people of a matchbook romance in your crumbling little world. AU S.2, LoVe


**Title:** Point/Counterpoint

**Authors:** freak-pudding

**Disclaimer:** _Veronica Mars_ is the property of Rob Thomas and UPN. No copyright infringement intended.

**Summary:** Lilly's dead, and Duncan's gone with his own little pink-wrapped piece of normal somewhere in Mexico, and you and Logan are stuck alone again, the in-between people of a matchbook romance in your crumbling little world. AU S.2

**Author's Notes:** Blatantly AU, I should think. Set sometime S.2, sort of around _Look Who's Stalking_, timeline-wise. And no, I am not referencing the band Matchbook Romance. It's a reference to a WW fic I haven't published yet.

You make time when you can find it, behind bleachers and in the back of ugly yellow cars, seatbelt buckles making angry red imprints in your back. He runs his fingers through your hair, leering that shit-eating grin right in your face, and you roll up, knock him back to the bottom.

"It's too much," he tells you, face folding in displeasure, leaning against his locker, body swaying back and forth on the pivot of his shoulder as he whistles to a passing rack. You know he liked your hair better when it was short, liked _you_ better, so you keep it long. Just for spite.

And you're careful to hide everything from Wallace and from your dad, and you think with a sting that they're the only one's you'd really tell anyway. Lilly's dead, and Duncan's gone with his own little pink-wrapped piece of normal somewhere in Mexico, and you and Logan are stuck alone again, the in-between people of a matchbook romance in your crumbling little world.

Sometimes he brings you champagne and vodka, and you stay up late one night, mixing screwdrivers and _Billy Jack_ and Logan looks at you, blue-rimmed eyes, sipping at the chipped edge of a shot glass, staring, staring, and finally you get pissed and snap, "What?"

He looks away then, mouth of marbles, face of shame, down-turned.

"Nothing."

The glass scrapes across his lip as he sets it down; tiny beads of crimson erupt in a thin line behind it.

"Fuck it," he whispers, swinging his leg up and over the table, shoving off, walking away. You watch him go, tossing back another apathetic drink.

He leaves you a well-planted note every once in a while. You follow the breadcrumbs to his room, the mussed bed, Logan sitting at the table with his mussed hair and a half-drunk bottle of vodka.

Once he had a gun. He didn't fight you when you pulled it from the lazy half-circle of his arms, gingerly, pinched between the tips of two fingers, held in front of you like the shit you both know it is.

"One day," he tells you. "One day I'm gonna fucking do it."

"Of course you are," you tell him, simpering, bitchy, tearing the tissue paper of his tiny fragile life just a little bit more. "After another cocktail, right?"

And it's the hate in his eyes that drives you the hardest, the way those beautiful brown eyes flash black, mouth turning down in rage.

"Fucking bitch," he growls, and that's when you know you'd better call and tell Dad not to wait up for you.

He tries to hit you sometimes, hands swinging wildly, but you're catching the blows with the slightest side of your wrist, smirking, laughing, tossing your long hair over your shoulder.

"Pathetic," you say, and your tone adds what you'll never have the guts to say out loud—"Was that as hard as _Daddy_ hit you?"

You find pieces of his stories sometimes, hunting the penthouse for your favorite Friday panties.

"Under the dresser," he reminds you plaintively, white boxers, scrunched onto the wide windowsill, hiding, watching the sun.

Scattered bits of paper, torn napkins, Post-Its, matchbooks, CD cases—you wonder sometimes how he finds the time, between school and booze and you. But they interest you, in the ways you refuse to admit you're interested in Logan (except in certain ways, and even those you don't talk about.)

You ask him, one day, what it is.

"Nothing," he snaps, reaching over you for the whiskey. Your fingers reach up, trace the edge of one burn scar. You never let him smoke in bed or in the car or behind the bleachers or anywhere else you find yourselves, tangled and angry and pushing and pitching and crashing just to feel.

You collide at random when you can, highway speeds, breakneck; the LeBaron's made to burn at sixty-six so you're careful at the bends, take the hairpin turns at a mere forty-five. Logan's the jackass crossing the center line, bleary, spinning through the dark of drunken stupor, and it doesn't surprise you at all when he calls, wheels spinning, smashed under the edge of a thick steel beam, two in the fucking morning, angry, blaming you.

"What, Logan?" you ask, venomous.

"_Fuck it,"_ he whispers into the phone, and you sit up.

"Where are you?"

You don't have time for his silence. You never have time.

"_I told you I loved you once."_

You fight the darkness for your jeans, steal yesterday's shirt from its hook on the wall, shimmying the denim past your hips, trying to keep the phone on your shoulder.

"Logan, do you have any idea what time it is?"

"_You didn't answer me."_

It's the catch in his voice that catches you, like silk dragged over wood, kinks that fasten and won't let go. You're thinking of his hands traveling you, curves and bumps and freckles, and the little kiss he pressed to the hollow of your right hip that first time, the way his fingers traced over your birthmark, grinning, happy, broken inside but too stupid to just let go.

"Logan?" you whisper, and the only answer is the speckle of glow-in-the-dark stars Lilly'd given you on the last birthday you'd had before she was gone.

You try to make time with him when you can.

"_I fucking loved you!"_ he screams, sobbing, angry, and you imagine the fifth of vodka at his elbow, the gun clutched loosely in the moonlit curve of his hand.

And now you're thinking of the Barbie you got for Christmas '95 long ago, all sugar and spice and pre-processed plastic, little words raised up on her backside that you'd run your finger over and giggle about. You played with her constantly, called her Jordan and told your mother she'd made you do it when you cut her hair off.

When you were six, Eric Mitchell from next-door stole her away and stuffed her in his mother's stove. You stood at the grilled window, watching, little fists pressed against smudged white metal, tears running down your dirt-spattered cheeks, watching your dreams go up in smoke and melt along the side of an unwashed brownie pan.

You seem to remember everything you've had being destroyed, one way or another.

"Logan, where are you?" you ask. "I don't really want to drive to the hotel."

His stories were spinning threads of a thousand different lives, a thousand different lies he's fed himself on, stories of Lynne with a cocktail and a smooth suede couch, Trina and moving into the pool house, staring up at Aaron's belts lined along the wall, tying his dad's favorite tie around his head to play pirate alone. He catches Mac hacking into his computer the day after _Billy Jack_ and that night he gives you a stack of paper, eighty-two thick, and then you lay in bed together, after, reading it. He smokes this time, and you let him, ashtray between your hip and the exposed bend of his knee.

"Is this true?" you asked, looking back, chin brushing the swell of your shoulder.

"It's what I remember," he replies, tipping the ashes off the end. You turned away, staring, absorbed.

His ragged breath drags you back, and you think for a moment that he's smoking and how you hate it when he does that and you're on the phone.

"Logan, listen, I'm coming over."

"_Fuck it,"_ he tells you again, voice wafting through a hail of static.

"Where are you?"

You space the words out this time, punctuated, sharp.

"_I'm not a fucking retard,"_ he says. You're getting nowhere, but you inch across the living room, cursing your keys as they jingle, footsteps muffled in the shag carpet.

Backup gives one baleful _woof_, and you're shushing him, rubbing his ears with misplaced affection.

"_You never write about the ones that come easy,"_ Logan tells you, husky voice like drips of honey across the line, and you pull the phone away from your ear, grimacing.

"I hate it when you're drunk."

"_I'm a better fuck that way."_

"Don't be an ass, Logan."

He gives a rueful laugh at that, and you shoot worried little looks over your shoulder as you pry open the door, hoping nothing will materialize out of the shadows in the hall. It's too late for Dad to wake up, but you'll be happier when he starts sleeping over at Alicia's again.

"_We're so fucking epic,"_ he sighs. "_That's the worst part."_

"Look, I'm coming to get you."

"_I wanna take back everything I did."_

He's pleading, begging, the image of Logan on his knees, asking for what you both know you can't give, and it kills you because he's sieved of everything you once knew as Logan.

"Tell me where you are. We'll get your car later."

"_Do you think there was ever a point anywhere that you could've loved me?"_

He stops you on the creak of one temperamental step, and you sigh.

"Were you with Dick, Logan?"

"_You're not even fucking listening."_

He'd named all the chapters of his stories after Bright Eyes songs and you made fun the other day, so he threw the laptop out the window.

"_I can't do this anymore,"_ he says, and you know now that he's asking you to do what he's been too scared to do for months now.

"I'm getting in my car now," you reply, jogging across the glittering lawn, sandals slipping over the dew. "We have school tomorrow, you know."

"_Veronica,"_ he pleads, but you shut him out.

"I'm coming."

You hear the softened sob in his voice, imagine him slumping over, head in one numbed hand. Crisis over for now, you know, pattern memorized.

"_There were no bullets in the gun."_

Your finger slips on the latch, and you curse the cold, curse the cut on your hand, sucking on your fingers as you fumble with the gate.

"_I tried. I was gonna do it this time. But it didn't have bullets."_

And you imagine what he's thinking because you've thought it, too, said it to his face when he's angry and trying to hurt you again. But your shell's grown thick and tough, and now you can only show him the kinks in his armor.

"_Fucking pathetic,"_ he says, the pre-emptive voice-over. You wish sometimes you could tell him that he's better than he thinks, better than Lilly and his dad and so much better than you, but the leather of the seat is sliding against the inch of exposed skin on your back and you shiver.

"I'm in the car," you say. "Where am I driving?"

"_I just wanna take everything back,"_ he says. "_I just wanna start over."_

"You can't start over," you bite back, and his silence makes you think of chipped shot glasses, _I Got Baked in Ensenada_, the line of blood drawn that you lean forward and lick off as you kiss him, and his fingers trace the hollow of your back.

You stop with the key in the ignition.

"_I can't fucking do this anymore, Veronica."_

He sniffs, and you can see him rubbing at his blue-and-purpled eyes. The little house of cards you've been building with him for months collapses at the smallest exhale.

"Don't, Logan," you whisper, because you can hear the wind on the bridge and you know it's real this time.

"_I wish you would've loved me,"_ he says. "_I'm sorry."_

And you hear your voice screaming his name into the night-black cloak of your darkened car, drowning in the shriek of a disconnected line.


End file.
